Reviews: Tepper, Sheri S.

Grass —
Sheri S. Tepper
Arbai, book 1

I’m
not a huge fan of Sheri S. Tepper, which is why I’ve only now read
her 1990 novel, Grass.
Not even the 1991
Hugo nomination was enough to tempt me. Why read it now? Someone
commissioned this review. I apologize if the result isn’t quite
what they expected.

Grass
is the first volume in Tepper’s Arbai
trilogy; it is set on the planet after which the novel is named.
Comparatively few humans call Grass home. There are the bons,
self-styled aristocrats, obsessed with hunting and indifferent to the
outside world; there are the port city Commoner Town and the friary
of Green Brothers. Not much to attract off-world visitors,
particularly in an era when the dominant Great Power, Earth-based
Sanctity, sees colonies as hotbeds of apostasy and chaos.

But
it is
of some interest that Grass seems to be the only world where people
do not die of a mysterious plague. This not-officially-acknowledged
disease seems likely to wipe out the entire human race1. While the
theocrats of Sanctity are comfortable with the idea of a mass cull,
particularly of heretics, heathens, and non-believers, they would
just as soon not see humanity, including themselves, go extinct.